Flight of White Knight Two
White Knight Two, the mothership for SpaceShipTwo, made its maiden flight yesterday. SpaceShipTwo is the ship that will allow Virgin Galactic, the space tourist flights from Sir Richard Branson, a civilian flight to the sub-orbit and to experience the sensation of zero gravity for six minutes.
White Knight Two, the function to carry SpaceShipTwo up to a certain height, where it must fend for herself and complete the second phase of the mission. This ship, as the rest of the fleet of Virgin Galactic, is manufactured by Scaled Composites operating exclusively for the first year the tour operator.
VMS Eve, the name of the first two White Knight Two are expected to manufacture, is equipped with four Pratt & Whitney PW308A engines, which are common in corporate jets like the Gulfstream G200 and Falcon 2000DX, which will deliver a total of 27,600 pounds of force and the ability to take off with a load of up to 17 thousand kilograms to a maximum altitude of 16,000 meters.
It is expected that the first commercial flight of Virgin Galactic will be the end of 2009. While the first 100 ‘tickets’ were sold to $ 200,000, the following will be sold 400 to $ 175,000 and then sell the rest for $ 20,000. No one said to be ‘early adopter’ was easy and economic.
